


A Puzzle in New Jersey

by Vonnix



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers, House M.D.
Genre: Crossover, Gen, Imported, human names used for the nations.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-10
Updated: 2018-03-10
Packaged: 2019-03-29 14:19:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13928838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vonnix/pseuds/Vonnix
Summary: A patient like no other is admitted to the hospital. A patient that House may not be able to diagnose.





	A Puzzle in New Jersey

**Author's Note:**

> Something I wrote a little over eight years ago but I still find a somewhat entertaining read.
> 
> Originally posted over on Livejournal.

1.  
When the patient was first admitted to the hospital, House was doing a rare round of clinic duty and used it to avoid bending to Cuddy's wishes and taking him on. After all, knife wounds, severe bruising, and burns aren't interesting at all. Then Cuddy decided to play dirty and bring one of House's team in as well.

"Mugged in a burning building. Weird and unfortunate, but not interesting."

But Foreman pulled his attention back onto him with a single string of words.

"He was legally dead for half an hour before coming back to life on his own."

2.  
The brainstorming session gets House no closer to figuring out his newest puzzle. No one can think of a way for someone to resurrect themselves after their heart having stopped for half an hour. Not without a lot of expensive medical equipment and even more luck.

House has his team run every test they can think of to see if the kid was sick or had any diseases that could give them a clue towards what was happening.

3.  
The police report that the hospital is given gets put onto House's desk as soon as it arrives. Immediately after reading it the man knows that things have been left out. It's in the wording of some of the paragraphs. If you know what to look for it's obvious that it's mostly – but not completely – a big lie from beginning to end.

And House knows what to look for. He lies enough himself, after all.

4.  
After searching down the first cop to have arrived on the scene House finally manages to get the whole story. As weird as it seems. House can't help but think it'd make for good television.

The kid's body had been found by a woman going out to throw her trash into the dumpster in the alley next to her apartment building. Tossed just out of sight behind the dumpster was where the kid had been stashed. After a few minutes of panicking (that the lady that had found the body was willing to admit to, it wasn't every day you find an apparently dead body laying next to your home after all) the woman got a passer-by that had stopped to see if she was alright to call 911.

After arriving, the police had scoured the area for any other evidence. They didn't find anything and were just rolling the stretcher with the kid's body on it into a truck for transport to the station when he started breathing again. Not only that but regained enough consciousness to tear his body bag open and struggle away from the men trying to keep him from falling off the cart and onto the pavement.

The two guys apparently had some pretty painful bruises from where they had been hit, but after they fell down the kid fell unconscious again. He didn't have any wallet or ID on him at all, so fingerprints had been taken before sending the kid off to the nearest hospital – the one that House worked at – but there were some problems with the computers.

As soon as the police had a name for the kid House was promised to get it but the tech guys were having trouble figuring out what exactly the problem was so it could be a while.

5.  
"This must be really bugging you, not knowing what's wrong with him so you can lord it over the rest of us."

House looks at Wilson, putting on a confused face. "What about it would bug me? The answer's obvious." he says in a mocking tone of voice.

"Oh? Do share with the rest of us." Wilson replies with a single eyebrow cocked skyward and his arms crossed over his chest. The blonde haired, blue eyed patient lays on a bed between them. An IV is pumping a mixture of antibiotics into the kid to keep any of his deeper cuts from getting infected and morphine to keep him unconscious.

"He's obviously the second coming of Jesus Christ." House replies easily. Wilson huffs out a breath and rolls his eyes but doesn't say anything else.

6.  
The tests all come back negative, but House had almost been expecting that to happen. The kid's in perfect health. At least as long as you discount the fact that he's got severe bruises and cuts covering nearly his entire body. Third degree burns cover the soles of his feet and the palms of his hands, second degree burns scattering his torso and limbs over top his bruises and cuts.

If it had been even remotely possible for the kid to be older than nineteen House would have guessed that his patient had been tortured for information.

7.  
The teenager sitting next to the kid's bed has gone unnoticed by nearly everyone that went into the room. It's something that House has been watching and not mentioning. The newcomer looks like he's related to the kid so House just stands back and watches the show from a distance.

Only when it becomes obvious that the teenager isn't just being left alone or ignored but actually _hasn't been noticed_ by anyone yet does House talk to him.

"Who are you?" House asks in his usual blunt manner. Cameron looks at him strangely as she changes the kid's bandages.

"Alzheimer's disease isn't something to joke about having, House." Cameron tells him shortly.

"It's a good thing I wasn't talking to you then, isn't it?" House replies. "I was talking to the guy everyone's been apparently too stupid to see hovering behind them whenever they come inside this room." House motions to the newcomer with his free hand.

It's obvious when Cameron finally sees the teenager because she jumps in surprise. "Oh my god." she gasps.

8.  
The newcomer is Matthew Williams, age twenty-one, the half-brother of the patient that House and his team are having such a problem diagnosing.

("It's really two third's brothers, if you want to get down into it, eh." Matthew says conversationally to Chase once. At the confused look Matthew laughs out "Our family's _really_ complicated.")

Matthew's arrival brings more questions than it does answers. They find out that the kid who brought himself back to life is named Alfred Jones, age twenty-two years old, blood type O+. All Matthew will say about either of their jobs is that they both do work for the government but not exactly what or even if it's for the American government.

Foreman manages to get it out of Matthew that Alfred does indeed need to go overseas frequently but when asked how often and if there's anywhere specific the teenager clams up and refuses to say anything else about his brother's career.

"I'm really sorry." Matthew says as an explanation. "But it's classified, eh."

They get the same answer for Matthew's job. It's frustrating but there's nothing any of them can do about it. House sets his team to checking for anything sneaky that could have been caught in another country.

9.  
"I asked Williams how he knew his brother was in our hospital when we didn't even know who Jones was." Wilson said to House on the second night of Alfred's stay.

House sits back up from where he had been tossing his ball against a wall of his office. "What did he say?" the question had occurred to House, of course, but he had figured that he'd only get another 'classified'. Matthew didn't seem to like House very much.

But what was new about that?

"He said that it's mostly classified, actually. I pushed him a little and got that Jones was supposed to meet Williams in New York and never showed up."

10.  
Whispering was what brought House's attention to Matthew standing in a dark corner of the parking lot.

"Sorry, England. There's not much I can do."

"They'd never let me. America has me listed as his next of kin but his body's in a bad state. I'd never be able to lift him, anyway."

"They're all Americans, eh. Well, one's from Australia but he hasn't spent much time in the room."

"I'll figure something out. See you soon."

House carefully snuck back into the hospital to mull over the portion of the conversation that he managed to hear.

11.  
Some of the more religious hospital workers have taken to pausing whenever they pass by Alfred's room to cross themselves. A couple have gone so far as to pray by his bed on their break. One even taped a length of prayer beads to the wall inside the patient's door. Cuddy put a stop to the behaviour when she found out, though Matthew didn't seem to care either way about it.

12.  
The man that arrived two days after House caught the tail-end of Matthew's confusing cell phone call is huge. There's no other word for it. He's dressed in a thick fur coat despite it being a very warm March and that's the second thing that catches many people's eye. The third is usually the wide smile that does nothing to break up the terrifying aura surrounding the giant.

Again, it's Matthew that gives House a name for the man.

"Ivan!"

A string of fast Russian springs from the giant and Matthew replies with his own string of accented and much slower Russian. From the expressions on the faces of his co-workers faces House can tell that he's not the only person that has no idea what the two are saying.

At least until they switch into English.

Ivan turns to look House directly in the eye. "You are House, _da_?" the giant doesn't wait for an answer, just continues smiling. "You are no longer in charge of taking care of Alfred."

"Ivan, you can't just-"

Matthew tries to pull the Russian away but only succeeds in getting himself pushed aside. Many eyes widen as the soft spoken young man gets sent flying into a wall seven feet away. When people go to help him Matthew waves them away and gets up on his own with only a small cut over his left cheek.

13.  
After meeting with Ivan, Cuddy tells House and his team that the Russian giant is actually a doctor. While he's not Alfred's usual doctor, Ivan works closely with the guy who _is_ and was sent by him to bring Matthew and his brother back to where they had been supposed to arrive six days previous.

As much as House hates to leave a puzzle unsolved he's willing to admit that there's not much he can do. Ivan brought papers from the American, Canadian, and Russian governments stating that there would be hell to pay if Alfred wasn't released to Ivan and Matthew's care.

14.  
Three months after Alfred Jones leaves House without an answer to the riddle his arrival at the hospital had posed, House gets one last bit of contact with the guy.

A letter in a standard sized envelope is mixed in with House's mail but there's no return address and the postmark is too smudged for even a cryptology team to figure out. The writing on the single piece of paper itself is a messy scrawl.

_Hi!_

_I never actually met you, but I'm sure that you're a great guy. Mattie tells me that he's sure you would have figured everything out if he had told you anything more than he did, especially after that phone call that you walked in on._

_(He told me not to tell you he knows about that, but I think it's funny so I'm saying it anyway.)_

_I thought you'd like to know that I'm okay. You've probably already forgotten about me, though. You never got to REALLY meet me after all, you guys all kept me unconscious the whole time I was with you. Alfred F. Jones? Apparently you guys all thought that I had been dead and then somehow managed to come back to life. Let me tell you my boss has had a field day setting everyone straight but I think you got left out of the loop._

_It wasn't anything too bad, you should have seen the other guys!_

The pen ran down the page there, the handwriting changing to a marginally better script.

_House, ignore what my brother's saying. He was every bit as bad as he looked, eh. I told you our work's classified, right? All that you can be told is some of the people we're working against caught Alfred and beat him up. He wasn't dead when he was found – it only looked like it._

More scribbled lines sang in the change back to the first set of handwriting.

_They couldn't hurt me! I'm the Hero! You know what they say about the hero after all! He never dies!_

Anyway, thanks for everything! You did a great job! So did your team, tell them I said that okay? I couldn't find their addresses so I could write them myself. Don't listen to what Arthur says, he may like to complain about how lazy I am but I'm a lot busier than he seems to think.

Cpt. Alfred F. Jones

PS: Just so you know, if I every DO end up back in your hospital... my cell phone's usually in an inside pocket of my jacket. No one ever seems able to find it except Francis.

:::::end:::::


End file.
